


To Make Him a Friend

by Hecate



Category: Enemy Mine (1985)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joey is dead now and Willis survives on some backwater planet with a Drac by his side. He isn't sure he still remembers what humans look like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Make Him a Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lies_d](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lies_d/gifts).



The Drac killed Joey.

They tried to kill it, too, but that doesn't matter. Because it killed Joey and now all that is left of him are the most stupid last words Willis has ever heard. And he is a soldier; he has heard a lot of them.

So Willis goes after the poor excuse for a lizard, goes after it hard. And fails.

And Joey is still dead.

*

It's an ugly planet they crashed on; lifeless, with a landscape that is both chaotic and empty. He starts to miss Earth instantly, starts missing the space station a few days after.

He wonders if the Drac misses the hellhole it crawled out from. He doubts it. Dracs don't feel like humans do. Dracs are just Dracs.

At least Willis has something to look at that is even uglier than the planet. It's not much, but for now it has to do.

*

The Drac lets Willis curse and scream, staying calm in the face of his anger. He's not sure if that means anything, doesn't let himself think about it for long. It lets him hunt, too, it lets him out of its sight. Willis doesn't think he would have done the same.

But that isn't something the Drac needs to know.

*

Jeriba is a nice name, a name that could roll off his tongue. But Willis never says it, never lets the Drac have that. He calls it Jerry instead, a joke the Drac would never hope to get, a joke that isn't even funny.

*

"Do you know the one thing that could make a Drac beautiful?" Joey asked him the first time they met. Willis shrugged. 

"Death." Joey grinned, carefree and alive. Willis laughed, shook his hand, and didn't tell him that he never saw a Drac. There was no need because back then, none of them had.

Joey is dead now and Willis survives on some backwater planet with a Drac by his side. He isn't sure he still remembers what humans look like.

*

“Jerry,” he says, grabbing his self-made bow. “I'm going hunting. So we can, you know, eat. You should try it sometime. Hunting. You eat all the time anyway.”

The Drac only gives him a long look. For a moment Willis thinks it might remind him of being its prisoner, that it won that little fight. But it doesn't and Willis leaves their little hut.

*

He spends most of his time in the open, grey sky above him, dirty brown soil beneath his feet. There are miles of loneliness around them and he walks through them on his own. He starts talking to himself. Sometimes, he's singing.

In the hut, he teaches the Drac English and it tells him about its race. He doesn't know why; he tells himself he doesn't care. But Willis never tells it to stop. It might be useful information one day, when he's saved and in human company again.

So he's quiet when Jerry tells him about a planet and a race he was fighting not too long ago, smiles when it tells him about a childhood so different and so similar to his own. He doesn't tell it much about himself. He doesn't want the Drac to draw the same conclusion.

*

“Davidge,” it says, “it will be winter soon,” and it sounds too human. It's his own fault, really; he was its teacher. But he wasn't about to learn the noise the Dracs call language.

He didn't plan to, at least, but the sounds slip into his mouth sometimes now. A few words filling spaces where English used to be, his own words forgotten for a couple of seconds. It's the isolation, he knows that, but that doesn't help. 

“I know, Jerry,” he answers, the name solid in his mouth. 

“We need to be prepared,” it goes on.

Willis raises an eyebrow, frowns. “I know that as well.” He pauses, turns to look straight at the Drac. “It would be easier if I wasn't the only one working around here. I'm not your slave.”

It looks at him and Willis wonders if that is amusement on the Drac's face, wonders if they can be amused at all. 

“You're my prisoner,” it counters. Willis doesn't reply. “But,” it says, “I will hunt with you. We need to kill some of the bigger animals. We need their fur.”

So they hunt. It's easier with the Drac by his side. Willis tries not to think about that.

*

Somewhere, a war is raging. Sometimes, they are fighting it, too, with sharp words and turned shoulders, with silence and punches. It never leads to anything but it's all they have left. All Willis has left.

Sometimes, the winds are singing and the rain is speaking and Willis closes his eyes and tells himself not too listen. He knows it's not real, but it feels as if he's forgetting that.

He's lonely, an emotion that feels alien after the time he spent cramped up on a space station with other soldiers. He's lonely, and he's the only human on the planet. He isn't alone, though; there's the Drac, too. It's what saves him, he thinks, and he almost calls it Jeriba. 

And that's worse than being alone. There are lines he shouldn't cross, and they're fading away in the sand of the planet.

*

Winter is there and it turns the grey around them into blinding white, makes them shudder in the cold every time they hunt. Forces them into the hut, taking away the distance the planet allowed them before.

It should disgust him, lying next to a Drac; he should be scared, sleeping so close to his enemy. But it doesn't and he isn't, he sleeps easily by its side, and when he wakes, he can watch it without jerking away.

That is the part that scares him.

*  
He starts wondering about the Dracs, starts having questions he never thought about before. Because they were just the enemy when he fought them, when he killed them. Now they are Jerry.

They are silly questions, questions he shouldn't have about the race at war with humanity. How do they have sex, how do they kiss, do they kiss at all? 

He almost asks Jerry, but stops himself in time. Wonders if it has the same questions about humanity. And tells himself to stop thinking about it.

*

He knows what Jerry's skin feels like, knows that the scales aren't soft like human skin, knows that its touch is surprisingly warm. Knows it because Jerry touched him when it saved his life, has touched him again since then.

Jerry isn't like Willis, doesn't shy away from any kind of contact between them, doesn't get angry as easily as Willis. It's a soldier, Willis knows that, it certainly fought like one.

But it never treats Willis like a soldier would.

*

“Jerry,” he asks in the darkness of one night, “do you think there will be peace?”

He is close enough to feel its answering shrug.

“There has to be,” it finally says. “Or we'll all die.”

“Do you think we can make peace?”

It has no answer to that.

*

Back on the space station, he ran into some of the other soldiers fucking or jerking off more than once, has been caught with his pants around his ankles by too many people. It wasn't surprising, the station was a glorified tuna can and there were too many of them to find any privacy on it.

On the planet, he had all the space he needed until winter forced him inside. Now, the hut is the only place he has. He doesn't touch himself for days, doesn't get off, but time is passing too slowly and there is nothing to do, nowhere to go.

So one night he pushes the fur and fabric he covered himself up with away and wraps his hand around his cock. He doesn't tease, doesn't draw it out, gets himself off quickly. He's used to it, he never wanted the other soldiers to see him like that, after all, and he has no interest in Jerry catching him either.

He comes with hardly a sound, his hand sticky and warm, and he wipes it off on his undershirt. It will be disgusting tomorrow, but he tells himself not to care.

When he turns onto his side, Jerry is watching him.

*

They don't talk about it.

*

Dracon is a hot planet, hotter than Earth, and winter is something the Dracs don't know. Jerry told him that when the first frost hit, shuddering in the cool wind. The temperature has dropped since then and Jerry is shaking even inside the hut, curled as close to their little fire as possible.

It starts to worry Willis.

He doesn't comment on it, tries to hide his concern. It wouldn't do for Jerry to think that Willis actually cares. Because he doesn't and he won't, and that he starts to drift closer to Jerry every night means nothing at all.

*

The snowstorm hits them during a hunt, biting into their faces and bones as they tumble through the deep snow. They barely find their hut and it takes painfully long for Willis to get warm again.

His teeth keep on chattering, a rattling sound in the hut, and he moves as close to the fire as he can bear.

“Looks like this one will last a while.”

Jerry keeps silent.

*

Another night, and Jerry catches him again, its eyes on Willis as he comes down from a too-brief high, hand wet and warm. Willis doesn't look away then, doesn't pretend to sleep. Just curls onto his side, closer to Jerry. 

“Go to sleep,” he tells it. “We need to hunt tomorrow.”

Jerry nods and closes its eyes. Briefly, Willis wonders when things became so easy between them. Asks himself if he minds. He has no answer to either question.

*

“How much more of this can you take?” he asks Jerry days later when it has gotten colder still, the storm still raging on.

The Drac is shaking as it answers. “I don't know.”

He crawls closer to Jerry then, crawls closer until they touch, pushing Jerry down beside the fire. Lies down beside him.

“Body heat,” he says. 

Jerry doesn't answer, just turns to face him. It doesn't stop shaking.

“Tell me about Dracon,” Willis goes on, pulling the blanket of fur over the both of them. 

“Tell me about Earth first,” Jerry replies.

Willis hesitates for a few seconds, thinks of enemies and wars, of soldiers and treason. It all seems so far away from them now. It seems more alien than Jerry.

“Okay,” he says and starts to talk about a blue sky and yellow fields, about cities and neon lights. By his side, Jerry stops shaking.

*

The wind is silent in the morning.

When Willis stumbles outside, the snow and the sun almost blind him. He blinks, takes a step into the world in front of their hut.

He thinks it might be warmer than the day before, thinks that the planet looks close to beautiful.

“Jerry,” he calls, “wake up.”

There's a tired groan from the inside, unwilling and rough.

Willis laughs. “Jeriba, you need to see this!”

**************************************************************************************

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.” 

Abraham Lincoln


End file.
